The 10 Best Video Game Plot Twists
Secret agendas. Hidden identities. People who have been dead the whole time—is this the Sixth Sense? No, it’s a video game. Someone call M. Night Shyamalan, because these ten games are coming for his crown as King of Plot Twists. These titles feature some of the most shocking twists in gaming history—each a digital personification of the UNO Reverse card. You’ll spend your first play-through doing your best Leonardo DiCaprio pointing-meme impression, screaming “WAIT A MINUTE” at your screen while the other narrative shoe drops. Head-scratchers, hair-raisers, and heart-pounders, these are the 10 best video game plot twists.
In case it wasn’t clear: massive spoilers ahead.
“Would You Kindly” – Bioshock
You’ve blasted your way through drug-crazed masqueraders. You’ve bested Big Daddies by the skin of your teeth. You’ve fought your way to the lair of mustache-twirling Andrew Ryan, the psychopathic titan of industry responsible for Bioshock‘s underwater hellhole known as Rapture. You’ve been helped along by Atlas, who offered words of encouragement in a charming Irish brogue. You’re happy to follow his directives, especially when he phrases them with a “would you kindly”—so polite! At the game’s climax, you figure out why you’re so eager to please: you’ve been brainwashed. Atlas isn’t your friend, he’s a manipulative crime boss known as Frank Fontaine, and you’re his unwitting sleeper agent, activated by his quaint trigger phrase. You thought you were in control of the narrative, but your choices were never your own—that’s a terrifying twist.
John Marston’s Last Stand – Red Dead Redemption
You gatling-gunned down outlaws at Fort Mercer. You played both sides of a Mexican revolt. You laid the corpses of your former comrades at the feet of the feds. All for what? To see your kidnapped family again. In its final act, Red Dead Redemption rewards the player with rest, tricking them into a false sense of security. John Marston spends his days teaching his son to hunt, reconnecting with his estranged wife, cultivating a sense of inner peace—then the government pulls the rug out from under him. The FBI never intended to let John Marston go free after using him as a human bloodhound, and they sent in the military to put him down. “The Last Enemy To Be Destroyed” is a devastating final mission—John Marston meets his end at the hands of a firing squad. At its climax, Red Dead Redemption cruelly reminds the player of a core theme: you can run from the past, but it will always catch up.
“V has come to” – Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
“V has come to”— those words are spoken at the beginning of Metal Gear Solid V, but the game doesn’t explain their significance until the end. Big Boss starts the story in a hospital bed, having just woken up from a coma after surviving the devastating events of the game’s prequel, Ground Zeroes. The player is led to believe that they are Big Boss, their comrades address them as such—but it’s all a lie. The Metal Gear Solid franchise is famous for its twists: The Boss’s reveal as a self-sacrificing hero in Metal Gear Solid 3, Raiden as the true player character of Metal Gear Solid 2, and the villain revealed as Solid Snake’s evil twin in Metal Gear Solid 1. All shockers, but they’re nothing in comparison to the reveal of Venom Snake—Big Boss’s amnesiac body double. Now that’s what I call an identity crisis.
The Cost Of The Cure – The Last of Us Part 1
The Last of Us Part 1 offers the player a glimmer of hope at the game’s beginning: Ellie’s immunity. If Joel can safely deliver his surrogate daughter to the care of The Fireflies, then maybe the shroom-zombie apocalypse can be averted. At the end of the game, the true cost of the cure is revealed: engineering it will end Ellie’s life. The player spends the game controlling the man they thought was the hero, but after Joel murders his way to Ellie’s hospital room and deprives the world of salvation, his morally grey colors begin to show once more. To be fair, most of us would have done the same.
Tyr’s True Identity (And Why Brok Is Blue) – God of War: Ragnarok
Throughout God of War: Ragnarok, the Norse God Tyr is framed as a silver bullet—a surefire solution to the Odin problem. Kratos and Atreus thought they were bringing a secret weapon to the fight against the All Father, but they never suspected that Tyr was secretly Odin himself! Odin took Tyr’s shape to spy on Kratos and his comrades, locking the real god away. Odin reveals his treachery in the most shocking way imaginable: by stabbing the beloved dwarf Brok when he gets too close to the truth. We find out later that Brok was brought back to life after he drowned, resulting in his skin’s blue hue, but his soul was lost for good. Brok’s second death is another plot twist of the knife—without a soul, he can’t pass into the afterlife. The fan favorite dwarf is dead and gone, forever.
Sheik’s True Identity – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Legend of Zelda games aren’t known for their complex plots, but Ocarina of Time proved to be the exception to the rule. After Link is thrown seven years into the Ganondorf-controlled future, he’s aided on his adventure by a masked figure named Sheik. Players wondered what happened to Princess Zelda in those seven years, but most never would have guessed that the mysterious warrior teaching them ocarina songs was actually the princess in disguise! Zelda did teach Link one of his very first ocarina tunes all those years before—but to do it again as a smoke bomb throwing ninja? No one, not even the wise old Deku Tree, would have expected that.
You’re A War Criminal – Spec Ops: The Line
Spec Ops: The Line puts you in control of Captain Martin Walker, a special forces soldier sent into the Middle East to make contact with a lost U.S. military unit. As Walker navigates the sandstorm-destroyed city of Dubai, he’s met with heavy resistance from the Damned 33rd, soldiers that once fought on his side. Facing heavy combat, Walker makes the Geneva Convention-defying decision to bomb an enemy holdout with white phosphorus—a substance that causes horrific chemical burns. As he wanders the wreckage, he realizes with horror that he didn’t bombard a Damned 33rd battalion, but an innocent group of civilians. Easily one of the most sickening plot twists in gaming, this is the moment the player realizes that they are anything but a hero.
You Prayed To The Wrong God – Shadow of The Colossus
Shadow of Colossus begins with a young man named Wander traveling to a forbidden land with a woman’s corpse in tow. After laying her on the altar of an ancient temple, Wander is told by the dark divinity Dormin that she can be saved—so long as he kills the giants that wander this land. As Wander fells more Colossi, his appearance gradually becomes more sinister—he’s grown little demon horns by game’s end. After the last giant is toppled, Dormin’s treachery is revealed. Released from the spiritual shackles that bind it, Dormin possesses Wander’s body in a bid to escape the temple prison. It’s a devastating plot twist that teaches the player about the psychology of grief. Making a deal with an evil god probably wasn’t a good idea on Wander’s part, but grief causes people to think anything but clearly.
2B, or Not 2B? – NieR: Automata
NieR: Automata is twist after twist after twist, featuring five separate endings. The most shocking comes at the game’s third climax—when warrior android 2B is revealed to be a secret executioner of her own kind. The androids in this universe have been fighting a war against an extraterrestrial machine menace to save humanity, but humans secretly went extinct centuries ago. Any android who discovers this truth is destroyed and revived with their memories wiped, all to protect morale. 2B—her real name 2E—is revealed to have killed her comrade 9S dozens of times after he repeatedly discovered the truth. It’s a shattering reveal, made all the more devastating by the psychological toll it takes on 2B. When a rogue computer virus finally does her in, death is a relief.
A Killer Case of Amnesia – Silent Hill 2
After receiving a letter from his dead wife, James Sunderland travels to the town of Silent Hill to make sense of the supernatural mystery. The town is capable of reflecting the traumas of those who enter it, and James spends the majority of Silent Hill 2 facing monstrous manifestations of his inner turmoil. Nightmare nurses, ambulatory mannequins, pyramid-headed torturers, there’s no shortage of horrors in this evil little village. The most terrible of all? James’ endgame realization that he is responsible for his wife’s death. Unable to watch her slowly succumb to illness, James smothered his wife with a pillow—and has been dealing with psychological fallout ever since. Guilt comes in many forms, in this case, grasping blobs of flesh threatening to tear James limb from limb. Plot twist? James might get his head twisted clean off.
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